Silver Branch Studios

I've been asked several times over the years why I got in to photography, whit drives me and what am I expressing. I never answered the questions directly, mainly because I didn't know how to.

It took me watching an interview of Lady Gaga on Ellen of all things to be watching. I won't go into that but it got me thinking about why I do what I do and how.

I don't think I ever got into photography, rather I think I was born that way. LOL actually I have always been what I call an observer.

Being an only child growing up in a military family, I traveled the world and I learned early on, while I might not understand the words people were saying around me, I understood expression and action. I also learned how important memories are to understanding why I feel about things as I do and where I come from. At one time or another I was also drawn to the gadgetry of cameras even as a little boy.

One of the earliest photos of me was then I was just a little over 2 years old and I already had a viewfinder of a camera to my eye. I knew pictures came out of those things and to me picture told stories words could not. For me the little frozen moments of time were treasure. My family always had photo albums documenting every year of not only of my life but those before me.

That's when the story teller in me was born. I started like anyone elese would just snapping shots of people around me, doing the ol' thumbs up or cheese grins. But soon that changed as I wanted to preserve moments, not poses.

My still photography work took many trails and turns and I finally found a voice. I found the wonder of Nature and the story it was telling.

Anyway I think what I am expressing is what I find right in this world. I find that Nature doesn't get it wrong. It doesn't judge it just is. When I come upon a scene and before I raise my camera I have to feel something about what I see, once I get that feeling down deep in my bones that I must capture, I take the time to carefully compose it, then expose it to preserve the image forever. What you see in the resulting photograph is something that personally moved me and touched my soul.

I hope the clumsy words above don't illustrate me as some nut. rather only my passion in photographic story telling. When you view my work, all you are doing is peering into my view of the world in front of me frozen in time just as it was.